The Body in the Swimming Pool by Shabnam Minwalla. Published in 2024 by Talking Cub, an imprint of Speaking Tiger Books LLP, 125A, Ground Floor, Shahpur Jat, Near Asiad Village, New Delhi, 110049, website: speakingtigerbooks.com. Pp: 199. Price: Rs 350.
It’s like opening a large box filled with Crispy Crème doughnuts, as the Fab Four do in Shabnam Minwalla’s (pictured) expertly packaged murder mystery, and selecting your favorite doughnut. You let the custard dribble gently over your chin. Or hesitate before you choose the pink sugar coated one with sprinkles. Then again, your hand hovers over the box, just like Paromita Mehta, the narrator of this craftily concocted murder mystery describes how she swoops down on the plain chocolate ringed doughnut.
It reminds the reader that the story is aimed at the "young adult” genre. Paromita is also infected with the chicken pox virus that lurks in the sub-title: The Chicken Pox Club Investigates.
Clearly Minwalla is at home in her territory as she marshals her gang of four teenage sleuths up and down the high-rise apartment complex where they live, and into the streets, famous clubs and cemeteries of Bombay. Though it is ostensibly Paromita, founder of "The Chicken Pox Club,” who opens her doors to this world when she finds herself stuck in her home on the 49th floor as she tells us of a multi-storied condominium in a Bombay suburb where there has been an attack of chicken pox. Or, as she explains, "The Orchard by Kotecha comprises four 64-storeyed buildings. The buildings are arranged like the blades of a ceiling fan around a vast swimming pool.” This is where, as the title proclaims, a body has been found floating in the swimming pool.
Soon, with a nudge and a wink from Minwalla, we are zipping along with the Fab Four in search of the murder suspect of a well-loved former professor of English named Sandra Saldanha. Until her unfortunate demise she had lived by herself on the 56th floor of one of the condos named Maple, after a tree, like the other buildings. Is it entirely by chance that this reviewer was suddenly reminded of Eunice de Souza, poet, professor of English at St Xavier’s College, Bombay, novelist and journalist, who like Saldanha was greatly loved by her students? Though let it also be said that de Souza had an early but perfectly proper end.
The 14-year-old Paromita is rather full of herself in the opening paragraphs. She proclaims "My IQ (intelligence quotient) is 147, which is more than Barack Obama’s but considerably less than Albert Einstein and Sherlock Holmes,” but that, as she adds, she’s working at it. Do we add here that Paromita lives with her father, a single parent and a widower? He appears to have more time for yoga teacher Aarti Butalia, who has installed herself in the adjoining building with a weaselly brother, than for Paromita.
This means that Paromita is stuck at home with nothing much to do except rifle through her vast collection of detective books. One of the Orchard Complex’s summer programs for children suggested "a workshop for young detectives” called "The Clue Crew” for which Paromita had signed up before her summer vacations. With the untimely death by drowning of Saldanha happening right under her nose, as it were, Paromita was ready for action. Not only that, but she found herself isolated behind doors with an attack of chicken pox. Enter a bumbling medical consultant named Dr Prabhu who was on hand to examine the unlucky Saldanha. The medical terms and details of the various stages of the pox form a part of the reason for starting what became a group activity as three other teenagers in the complex also found themselves in a similar situation.
We then meet Darius Engineer, a gung-ho brash wannabe detective; Nihal Advani who is the silent brooding type, but essential at key moments; and finally, Sunidhi Menon, "a chicken poxy girl” with a yen for becoming a dancer. This is an important clue that Minwalla scatters right at the beginning, being sure that no one except perhaps Paromita will recognize its significance. That Sunidhi is a popular girl at school does put Paromita’s nose slightly out of joint, as one might expect of a teenager. Her other asset is that she has an excellent Mom who provides most of the victuals that bring the gang together. As anyone who recalls their Enid Blyton prototypes of mystery solvers, or return to their Nancy Drew days must know, food is an essential element in solving any kind of anti-social activity.
Let us also include Inspector Ghote of the Bombay cadre created by H. R. F. Keating, in this line-up of favorites, not to mention Satyajit Ray’s Feluda, who is of course more at home in his native Calcutta. For these gentlemen bring a desi touch to their investigation skills. Of more recent vintage there’s also Vish Puri by Tarquin Hall who moves in the more rarified circles of North India. What sets these sleuths apart is their sharp portraits of the culture and characters that jostle through their investigations and provide an element which takes their accounts way beyond the actual crime fiction genre.
We might say this of Minwalla’s teens in search of trouble narrative as well. She shuffles her cards about the way that present day Bombay lives and places them on the table with a meticulous attention to detail. There’s an afternoon spent in the cane chairs and tabled long verandah of the Gymkhana Club for instance where the Fab Four have tea with the friends of the dear departed English professor; a truly memorable ramble through the Sewri graveyard looking for clues; besides a fascinating parade of suspects from different walks of life seen through the eyes of Paromita and friends.
It reminds us of what R. K. Narayan, the famous writer who created his own world, once advised a young writer: "Just look out of your window. You will find that every person you see out there has a story to tell.”
Paromita who looked out of her window and found a body floating in the pool, will surely agree. GEETA DOCTOR
Doctor, a longtime contributor to Parsiana, is a writer and critic.